City Cinema: Sweet Angel Baby

Drama. TBD.
Dir: Melanie Oates, Canada, 2025, 96 min.
Michaela Kurimsky, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Peter Mooney.

Screened at the 2024 Charlottetown Film Festival

“People in a bucolic coastal town turn quickly on their own when the status quo is inadvertently challenged. Attending church, baking bread, and marrying high school sweethearts are the standard in a small fishing town in Newfoundland, and despite not having checked the last two of those boxes, Eliza is beloved by all those around her. After a church service, she… heads into the nearby woods, with a purpose that nobody in her life is aware of: taking self-portraits in a bikini and ski mask to post to her super-popular anonymous social media account, which is filled with many more suggestive photos of Eliza. Nobody from the town knows about another secret of hers: that in private quarters, she has a relationship with Toni. An outsider to the town and an out lesbian, Toni is begrudgingly welcomed. A questionable meet-up with a married man unravels all of Eliza’s secrets and forces her to re-examine her morals, her identity, and her place in the community, in a spectacular fashion. Sweet Angel Baby is a beautiful and heartbreaking look inside small-town identity politics, masterfully deploying themes of conformity, queerness, and sexuality.” —Kelly Boutsalis, TIFF